DisastersLeaning into Uncertainty: A Life of Anticipating the Worst-Case Scenario
One of the most difficult things about the COVID era is not knowing anything for certain. At first, no one knew the great reach of the virus, how exactly it spread, or how many would die. Twelve months in, we are still fuzzy on the details. In a world of loud talkers that is starved of true leadership, where do we as individuals turn for information and reliable answers? The director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, agrees that managing the unknown is indeed uncomfortable. But his advice differs from most experts. Rather than leading us down one path with extremist conviction, he suggests instead that we lean into our uncertainty.
One of the most difficult things about the COVID era is not knowing anything for certain. At first, no one knew the great reach of the virus, how exactly it spread, or how many would die. Twelve months in, we are still fuzzy on the details. In a world of loud talkers that is starved of true leadership, where do we as individuals turn for information and reliable answers?
The director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, agrees that managing the unknown is indeed uncomfortable. But his advice differs from most experts. Rather than leading us down one path with extremist conviction, he suggests instead that we lean into our uncertainty. I spoke with him by Zoom to discuss managing our new world of unknowns in the current pandemic.
“Our tendency is to reject uncertainty,” Schlegelmilch told me. “We want answers, a checklist, a pill, a vaccine, something discrete and simple to solve these problems.”
It’s true—we all want fast answers and fast solutions, especially when dealing with the unknown. Not only is this virus a moving target, with lots of unexplained medical impacts, but also our understanding of it is so limited it feels overwhelming.
“Instead we need to build systems that focus on the ranges of things that could happen, and to build options that can be employed as more information is available,” said Schlegelmilch, “This is a different mindset with different questions than we are used to asking, but will build stronger resilience to the challenges we face.”
In his recently published book on preparedness, Rethinking Readiness: A Brief Guide to Twenty-First-Century Megadisasters, Schlegelmilch guides the reader through the five major disaster scenarios: biothreats, climate change, critical infrastructure failure, cyberthreats, and nuclear conflict. The book is refreshingly direct in its dealing with global threats and vulnerabilities. Surprisingly, Schlegelmilch wrote Rethinking Readiness before the pandemic. Another indication on how he landed in one the most prestigious positions in his field—he was prepared.
Schlegelmilch has spent his entire career preparing for the troubling global catastrophes many of us avoid thinking about. His experience spans roles in epidemiology, emergency planning, pandemic planning, disaster preparedness policy—and yet, his undergraduate path to preparedness wasn’t through memorizing statistics and probable outcomes. Surprisingly, Schlegelmilch was a theater major.
